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AAALetter

The Newsletter of the American Association for Applied Linguistics

December 2015
Volume 27, Number 4

Table of Contents

From the President
Our organization, the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), embodies the globalization of knowledge. Despite its name, AAAL has the look and feel of an international organization; the scope of our intellectual activities and the membership profile reflect contributions from around the world. As of September 2015, 690 of the 1,978 members (35%) were international members who live and work outside the United States. This figure does not include many of the US-based members who are international students and scholars as well as recent immigrants to the United States. Some of the recent leaders of the organization have ties to Australia, Germany, Japan, Russia and Sri Lanka. Even our founding president, Wilga Rivers, was from Australia. Read More.

AAAL, AILA, and the World of Applied Linguistics
In many ways, AAAL is actually an international association. This will come as no surprise to the one-third of our members who come from countries other than the US, or to our Canadian colleagues who joined with us to hold last year’s annual conference in Toronto (and the 2006 conference in Montreal and the 2000 conference in Vancouver). Read More.

Guidelines for Communicating Rights to Non-native Speakers of English in Australia, England and Wales, and the USA
In October, the AAAL Executive Committee endorsed the document entitled “Guidelines for communicating rights to non-native speakers of English in Australia, England and Wales, and the USA”. The document was then passed to the Resolutions Committee and is now displayed at the AAAL Website in anticipation of the membership vote in April 2016. As a co-convenor (with Diana Eades) of the Communication of Rights Group that produced this document, I was asked to say a few words about the guidelines. Read More.

Graduate Student Council Represented at the AAAL Executive Committee Midyear MeetingNicole Pettitt, co-chair of the Steering Committee of AAAL's Graduate Student Counsel (GSC), was in attendance at the October meeting of the Executive Committee (EC).This was the first time a graduate student member had been invited to attend an EC meeting, marking a new level of graduate student involvement, as well as affirming AAAL’s support for graduate student leadership. Read More.

This column that started in the previous issue features a member who received the Graduate Student Award and has continued to remain an active member of this organization. Following Laura Collins from Concordia University in Montreal, introduced in September, this issue delivers a message from Peter de Costa at Michigan State University. Read More.

Be Prepared to Make Some Tough Choices!
There’s a line in an old James Taylor song that says, “Seems like I was born with too many choices” – and that is exactly how conference-goers may feel next April in Orlando! Indeed, there may even be disappointments if two or more presentations you’d like to attend are scheduled at the same time. Read More.

Professional Opportunities Sessions at the 2016 AAAL Conference
We are very excited about a feature of the 2016 AAAL Conference that we are calling “Professional Opportunities Sessions.” These are invited panel presentations that are not about research in applied linguistics. Rather, the panelists will address issues of possible interest with regard to professional development endeavors, such as publishing and applying for grants. Read More.

Update from the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL)Volume 35 (2015), Alison’s first as Editor, was unveiled at the 2015 AAAL conference in Toronto. ARAL now has new print size, a re-vamped cover design and an updated internal layout. The print copy was completely redesigned for an up-to-date and fresh new look, reflecting the innovative contents within. Read More.